Rewind
by cupid-painted-blind
Summary: They could all go to a bar and forget the past. They could reread the book, rewind the film. It would be so easy. [Harry, post war. One shot.]


**rewind**

_(don't close your eyes)_

None of them ever say it, but it's on all of their lips - _this is what we fought for? _A life of rebuilding and reworking and reliving and re-dreaming and trying to thread together all the far-flung fragments of all the things they used to desire. A life of trying so hard to reach something they might have had once - maybe once when they were innocent, or maybe once when they were outcasts, alone, together - when they fought and lived and breathed and ate and slept and cried and cursed and loved - They all want to reach back in time and retrieve something that they've lost.

He has his peace and it's not what he imagined it would be. He doesn't want to be the famous Dark-Lord-Killer, he wants to be a kid at school again. He wants to play Quidditch and care about House Points and obsess over pretty Ravenclaws.

But they've lost nothing if not their childhoods, and those who've died for them mean nothing in the end, just bodies in the ground, just names on a stone. A tragedy in etching, a sacrifice in mud. He doesn't think he'll ever quite be able to cry over them, because they got out easy, because they don't have to look into the faces of the living and constantly see the dead. Because they don't have to feel remorse. Dead and gone and rotting at the bottom of a pit, and if he can make it inhuman and unreal then it can't touch him because it's just a pile of bones that never loved or hated or laughed or cried. Just dust.

Everyone's crying and exhausted and drained and just a little lost, just a little _what do we do now?_ Because there's no Dumbledore to lead them and no Voldemort to frighten them, and they don't know how to get by when they're still grappling with the shards. And the sun is setting, blood-red and terrifying in all its splendor and power and beauty, and the thing he wants most, right now, is to go to a pub with all of his friends and get completely smashed, toasting to the death toll.

They could all sit around the bar for hours, talking about Fred's jokes or Lupin's class or Colin and his damn camera, and they could all forget about the sting, if only for a moment. Put off the agony, if only for one - more - night. Pretend that they're all still alive, watch the movie again. Believe, desperately, painfully, that the story won't end the way they all know it does - close their eyes tight and _will _the dead back into existence.

They could all sit around the bar for hours, and never have to face the future. It would be easy, and irresponsible, and expected of them, the youngest, the hardest-hit, the ones who've paid for this war with their own blood and souls and dreams. They would be forgiven, they would be pitied, if they could just run away. It'd be so easy, and so wrong.

He doesn't mention the idea to anyone he knows will go along with it - Hermione gives him an almost sad look, but says that there's still so much to do, and Mr Weasley half-laughs and says he'd pay if they did, but he still has a son to bury. Ron would come, if he asked him to. Dean, Seamus, Neville - they'd come along and drink the bar dry with him. Ginny, maybe. George, certainly.

But the fact still remains, they can't leave their duties, and neither can he. The dead need to be buried and the living can't escape so easy. The sun is setting and he has no idea where to go from here - back to the Burrow? To the Dursleys, who need to know that they're safe now? Or somewhere else? He's vanished into thin air before, why not again? Why not just... go, and never come back? Move to America or France or Spain or anywhere but here, somewhere where he can be just another kid trying to make it by? To be anonymous - an untouchable dream.

The world, he's starting to learn, isn't a movie, or a video game, or a book. It's one of those things he's always known, and always heard, and always understood, but which hasn't ever really sunk in - the universe doesn't stop. Even when everything is stripped away, even when he wishes beyond anything that he could stop, go back, start over, even when the world seems to collapse... It isn't over. The sun still rises and sets and rises and sets, no matter who died and shouldn't have or who didn't die and deserved it. The world doesn't stop turning because a bad guy got killed today.

And he can't stop either, and that's the part that hurts. He can't stop and bid them all a fond farewell. He can't reach into the afterlife and bury his face in his mother's shoulder. He can't make Teddy Lupin understand that his father was one of the best people he ever knew. He'll never be able to touch any of it again, even though it feels so - damn - close. It's gone, they're gone. All of them, all of his childhood and innocent little dreams of winning the Quidditch Cup or being a hero so Cho would be impressed.

They could all go to a bar and forget the past, if responsibility didn't have the vice grip it does. They could all get drunk to the death toll and dig up old pictures and memories and stories and laughs. They could all reread the book, rewind the film. It would be so easy.

It would be so cruel, and it would feel so good. If only for a moment, if only they could go back. If only for one night, they could erase it all. If -


End file.
